[RFC][PATCH v4 06/11] Provide backward compatibility for strftime family (bug 10871).

[Florian Weimer]

On 11/07/2016 03:13 PM, Florian Weimer wrote:

> One example where this matters is German.  If POSIX requires that %B
> returns the genitive case, as has been suggested, then all applications
> which currently use %B are broken because I have yet to see a
> mechanically generated German date string which actually needs the
> genitive case.  In current usage, they only occur in phrases such “on
> the last Sunday of November”.

The concern expressed in the paragraph above is not relevant because 
it's about month name mangling for inclusion in full date strings, and 
not about declension.  German does not have an issue with that, but many 
Romance languages do because some of them do require such mangling in 
full date strings, as explained here:

   https://sourceware.org/ml/libc-alpha/2016-11/msg00321.html

To be absolutely clear, I still object to the change to %B (and MON_1 
etc.) and moving the old definitions to %OB (ALTMON_1 etc.).  The right 
way to do this is to leave %B (MON_1 etc.) alone and add %OB (ALTMON_1 
etc.) with the new mangled form.  This also removes the surprising 
change of behavior due to a simple recompilation of unchanged sources.

As there has been some confusion regarding past objections of mine which 
were apparently worded in too a conciliatory way, I consider this a 
sustained objection under the glibc consensus protocol.

Thanks,
Florian